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"Toward the end of the 19th century, American medical education was in chaos; most medical schools were little more than trade schools. Often, it was easier to gain admission to one of these than to a liberal arts college. With the opening of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889, followed four years later by The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins ushered in a new era marked by rigid entrance requirements for medical students, a vastly upgraded medical school curriculum with emphasis on the scientific method, the incorporation of bedside teaching and laboratory research as part of the instruction, and integration of the School of Medicine with the Hospital through joint appointments"1.

Also independent sources confirm this description of the excellence and influence of The Johns Hopkins'medicine: "Johns Hopkins has been the most influential medical center in the twentieth-century evolution of scientific medicine. (…) The hospital opened in 1889; the medical school's opening was delayed by the fact that the benefactor's Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, which Mr. Hopkins had assumed would cover operating costs, suddenly stopped paying dividends. A group of women came forward -daughters of Johns Hopkins University trustees- and agreed to raise half a million dollars, on the condition that qualified women students be admitted along with the men. After the arguments gradually died down, the women were given the go-ahead. When they hnded over the money they demanded that all netrants to the school be subject to the stiffest of entrance requirements: a college diploma; proficiency in French, german and latin; and a strong background in the sciences. These standards where so incomparably high that one professor quipped to another: 'We were lucky to get in as professors, for I am sure that neither you nor I would ever get as students'.

- A.McGehee Harvey, G.H.Brieger, S.L.Abrams and V.A.McKusick, A Model of Its Kind (Vol.I: A Centennial History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins; Vol.II: A Pictorial History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins), The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 1989.